Diary of a diabolical book launch
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| Will Sutton
© Caroline
Lambe
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My wife Caroline looked horrified. "Tell me you're not
going to do the fiery nipple tassels, are you?"
I love a show. Don’t you? A song, a few laughs, a story. I also love book
readings, panels and launches: pearls of wisdom tossed before us bedazzled
readers. As I’d spent the weekend performing at Lounge
on the Farm and enjoying the twisted darkness of the Boom Bang Circus cabaret, I wanted more
than your average book launch. When I told my wife I was going to try something
a bit different, she feared I might try to recreate some of the wilder
Boom-Bang moments with tassels, hoola-hoops and lingerie.
Fun for all the family
Music,
Murder, Metropolitan at
Waterstone’s extraordinary Gower
Street shop.
When a normal employer sees my CV, I blush at the gaps in my
employment history: Withnail & I North London wilderness years; run away to
Brazil;
difficult second novel.
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© Caroline
Lambe
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When my publicist looks at my CV, she loves the nonsensical
lacunae: Brazil
cricket team; longest play in world; tutoring Sugababes.
I squandered much of my youth hanging around with out-of-work
actors. Rehearsing clowning skills chez Ecole Philippe Gaulier, I learned how
the audience enjoy the actor’s pleasure: it is the only theory I know that
explains Connery, Caine, Burton
and Cary Grant.
I survived Ken Campbell’s theatrical epic, The Warp by Neil Oram. From Ken I learned that audiences love
things that start, change and then come back again, so we can all pat ourselves
on the back and say, “Oh, I get it now.”
From Peter Brook I learned that holy theatre quickly turns to
deadly theatre, and that rough magic can be conjured out of nothing with good
will.
Surviving the book launch
We novelists pour into our books all the love and hate, fun and
frenzy, passion politicking that we can. But in performing, it is tough for us
to be as entertaining as our books. Which is a shame. We are probably
fascinating if you catch us at our ease, in the pub, or at a festival.
The pressure to perform, to impress, to sound erudite and
informed can stultify the magic of the writing. After all, erudition and
information are not the primary reasons for reading. They are bonuses. But what
is thrilling is to be entertained and only later realise how much substance you
have absorbed.
That is why I was over the moon to discover the ReAuthoring Project, with
whom I have performed in restaurants, ships, fields and tents. Here’s a bit of
their manifesto:
- The author is at the centre of ReAuthored
performance, delivering their own work. They do not have to pretend to be
an actor.
- ReAuthoring keeps the audience in mind. It
seeks to entertain, inspire, bemuse and generate emotion.
- ReAuthoring is a valid offering to the
audience in and of itself. You do not have to have read the book to ‘get
it’. It stands alone.
A Lawless Launch
Arriving at Gower
Street, we found a sign: The Law section will be
closed from 6 o’clock. Which meant that, for our launch, it would be a Lawless bookshop.
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© Caroline
Lambe
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Noel and I presented a cabaret version of the play. It started
with subterranean protest songs, in the spirit of the book (if not the era).
The larksome japery went on with a character parade. I particularly enjoyed
being Mrs Marx:
“Karl makes it so difficult for himself writing the
way he does. If only he could write a bestseller like Mr. Dickens. I feel sure
he could.”
While Noel’s urchin Worm made people look up from their Pimm’s
and Garibaldi biscuits:
“Tug on your cover-me-properlies, your
stampers and fumbles and bonarest fakements, and toddle along. Shift your
crabshells, you doxy old fishbag!”
We
sang London
songs by the Pogues and the Smiths and rebellion songs by Eddie Vedder and
Jamie West. The highest praise came from @oldmapman: “Heck of a way to launch a
book!”
Why Victorian crime?
By
mistake. I found:
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a picture of the
banquet for tube opening day, 9 Jan 1863
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that 10,000 were made
homeless by the Metropolitan diggings
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that the Fleet Sewer
broke in just months before
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that a driver crashed
on a trial run, overrunning the sidings at King’s Cross
With
this recipe for revolution, I fell in love with subterranean London. I already loved Willkie Collins and
his “mysteries that lie at our own doors”.
I learned that it’s no accident that evolution, crime fiction, criminology and
psychology began simultaneously.
I
had to become an 1860s expert, yes, but setting a techno-thriller in the past
has advantages. I could be blunt about terrorism. Is there never a
justification for revolutionary action? Not even in a society that’s crazily
unjust?
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© Caroline
Lambe
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Larksome Sprees
and Japery
Waterstone’s bookshop
entered into the spirit providing Victorian biscuits (Bourbons and Garibaldi’s
– thanks, Sam). The audience entered into the spirit singing along my
ridiculous song:
Ooh, the Victorians:
so lusciously lascivious, so strenuously stentorian.
Ooh, the Victorians:
hysterical histrionics
to enravish a historian
Using
all the voices I had just tried out recording the Audio book, I had a lark.
There were ridiculous moments, but I think they helped convey the book’s
serious side too. And next time, maybe I’ll try Boom Bang circus style tassels.
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| Phillip Patterson (Agent) and Ayo Onatade
© Caroline
Lambe
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© Caroline
Lambe
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